


Like an Island

by nymja



Category: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-29
Updated: 2013-01-29
Packaged: 2017-11-27 10:11:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/660775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nymja/pseuds/nymja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>pre-games. Revan has a conversation and Meetra makes a choice. No one can go home again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like an Island

  
The girl who would be exiled sits underneath a tree on Dantooine. The sun is warm on her face from the spots the leaves don't quite shade, and the bark is digging into the ridges of her spine just so as she leans against it, but she doesn't care at the moment. Because this is her favorite spot, and it might be the last time she gets to visit it as her breathing evens and her mind stills.  
  
Her choice was made the second Alek asked, she realizes. Over a week ago, when he had set down his hand --so big, it had engulfed her entire shoulder like a youngling caging a butterfly in their palms -- and had asked, very slowly and sorrowfully, if she would join him and Revan in doing what she knew was right.  
  
She had asked for time. What she really had been asking for was absolation, and for privacy. The one who would be exiled suspected Alek knew it was time for goodbye and not for reflection.  
  
The light that wasn't quite blocked by the leaves of her favorite tree stung her eyes, just slightly.  
  
The Temple was not hers. Not anymore. Not since Revan began to amass her comrades. Not since Alek had sighed and said innocents would die.  
  
This was a moment that would never be reclaimed, as the girl who would become Exile watched the padawans chase after kath hounds in the distance, blues and yellows and greens flickering.  
  
How long until she saw those colors again? And whose blood would they be spilling?  
  
"You've been avoiding the courtyard."  
  
His voice, somber and always so sad, should have been more surprising than what it was.  
As it was, the Exile simply moved, the light that had stung her eyes retreating under the full shade of the tree as Revan took the seat next to her.  
  
"I needed time away from the Temple-"  
  
"It's easy, isn't it?" Revan interrupts her excuse, and she bites her lip. She knew better than to hide what she was feeling from the man who had somehow managed to...captivate her, in a way no one else quite had.  
  
"Revan?"  
  
He smiles, and the pylat's feet at the corners of his eyes move with it. He hasn't slept. None of them have slept. "Here, watching the fields, it's easy to pretend that no one's in pain, isn't it? That no planets are falling, that the Mandalorians aren't killing innocents?" He sighs, and when his shoulder brushes against hers, she doesn't protest. They are past such pretenses, "It's easy to forget that there's nothing beyond our home."  
  
She falls silent, and her head dips down, causing hair to fall and obscure her eyes.  
He brushes it away, tucks it behind her ear.  
  
"I..." and his voice is quiet, and soft. And the one who will be Exiled knows it is that voice she is beginning to fall in love with, "I would like for this place, this moment in time, to still be here." He looks at her then, and his eyes are always so dark, "We can never return here. Not after we leave, it'll be cold, foreign, and denied to us, because we denied  _them_."   
  
Her eyes well with tears. She did not have Revan's gift of charisma, nor Alek's of persuasion. But she felt-- far more deeply than either-- and perhaps that is why they were drawn to her as strongly as they were.  Love, was something she had always held in spades, and it was her weakness as well as her strength.  
  
She was willing to leave behind this moment, because of that love. A love for strangers she has not even met yet.  
  
Revan's finger traces slowly underneath her eye, gently, as he stares at the tear on the tip of his finger as if he is not sure what it means.  
  
He leans forward, and his breath on her ear is a promise.  
  
"We can never return here, but we can save it."  
  
Then Revan kisses her forehead, and he is gone.  
  
\--  
  
The girl who chose Exile is standing in the courtyard.  
Alek is beside her, his hand engulfing her shoulder like hands around a butterfly while Revan stands under the great tree and proclaims defiance.  
  
She does not cheer with the others, and Alek hugs her close to him as she avoids Kavar's stare.  
  
\--  
  
The woman who has been Exiled plunges her lightsaber into the rock and meets their gazes.   
She can't go home again.  
But this will become home for others.  
And she walks away with her head held high, even while inside there are cracks like the rays of sunshine through leaves.


End file.
